Aditi Mallavarapu received her B.E in computer engineering from Savitribai Phule Pune University, in Pune, India, and her M.S. and Ph.D degrees in computer science from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Prior to joining North Carolina State University as a faculty, she was a postdoctoral research associate at the National Science Foundation (NSF) AI Institute for Inclusive Intelligent Technologies for Education (INVITE), affiliated with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She was also a postdoctoral researcher at Digital Promise working with the NSF hub Center for Integrated Research in Learning and Computer Sciences (CIRCLS); a visiting scholar at University of Pittsburgh; and a research assistant at the New York Hall of Science. Between her academic training, she also obtained experience working as a software developer.

Her work specializes in innovating and implementing human-centered computational techniques in open-ended learning settings that support exploration-based learning (e.g.,in museum exhibits and serious games), as well as in investigating interdisciplinary research communities using network science (an effort applauded by the evaluation team at the NSF). One of her early works is regarded as the first to apply educational data mining techniques to reveal patterns of explorations in open-ended learning environments. She was awarded the emergent scholar in research title at CIRCLS for her interdisciplinary research contributions.